Download Routes to Diagnosis 2006-2013, preliminary results

Routes to Diagnosis 2006-2013, preliminary results
National Cancer Intelligence Network Short Report
Background
Since the publication of the Cancer Reform Strategy1 in 2007
and continuing with Improving outcomes: a strategy for
cancer2, cancer survival has been a key area for improvement
in England. Compared to the European average cancer
survival in England is low3. Studies suggested this difference
could be largely due to later diagnosis, when cancers have
progressed to a more advanced stage and are harder to treat.
Key messages
• preliminary routes to
diagnosis data are
available for 2006-2013
for the first time
• the proportion of cancers
diagnosed through
emergency presentations
continues to decrease,
now at one in five cancers
in 2013
• the proportion of cancers
diagnosed through the
two week wait has
increased
The National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative (NAEDI)
aims to increase the number of people diagnosed early.
Increasing early diagnosis should improve survival in England,
so that it approaches levels seen in comparable European
countries. Many research programmes and campaigns for
increased cancer awareness have been conducted under the NAEDI banner and a
number of government policies instigated. Most recently, the Independent Cancer
Taskforce4 outlined further priorities around early diagnosis.
One key piece of this work, published by Elliss-Brookes et al. in 2012, defined a
methodology to determine the route a patient took through the healthcare system before
receiving a cancer diagnosis. Routes to diagnosis3 found large differences in how
patients were diagnosed and large variation in survival between these groups. In
particular it was found that one in four cancer patients were diagnosed as an emergency
presentation, and that this route was associated with low survival.
As of 2015 much activity has been focused on changing the distribution of these routes
to help improve survival and this may help measure the success of early diagnosis
initiatives. Routes to diagnosis data are being updated and some preliminary results are
now available for further study.
1 www.ncin.org.uk/databriefings
Routes to Diagnosis 2006-2013, preliminary results
Introduction
Presented here are the preliminary results from the fourth iteration of the Routes to
diagnosis project. Updated data are presented covering 2006 to 2013, with 2011-2013
being published for the first time. These data show the proportion of patients diagnosed
by route and by year in England.
Breakdowns by cancer site, year, sex, age, deprivation and ethnicity will be made
available on the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) website5. Cancer
screening data for cervical and bowel cancers are unavailable at the time of publication,
and once these datasets are added the full cohort of results will be made available.
A route describes the end point of a pathway a patient follows to a diagnosis of cancer.
There are eight aggregated routes derived from multiple linked data sets:
• screen detected: detected via the breast, cervical or bowel screening
programmes; screening data for cervical and bowel cancer are not available at the
time of publication
• two week wait: urgent GP referral with a suspicion of cancer, using the two week
wait (TWW) guidelines
• GP referral: routine and urgent referrals where the patient was not referred under
the two week wait referral route
• other outpatient: an elective route starting with an outpatient appointment: either
self-referral, consultant to consultant or other referral
• inpatient elective: where no earlier admission can be found prior to admission from
a waiting list, booked or planned
• emergency presentation: an emergency route via A&E, emergency GP referral,
emergency transfer, emergency consultant outpatient referral or emergency
admission or attendance
• death certificate only: no data available from Inpatient or outpatient Hospital
Episode Statistics (HES), cancer waiting times (CWT), screening and with a death
certificate only diagnosis flagged by the registry in the cancer analysis system
• unknown: no data available from inpatient or outpatient HES, CWT, screening
within set time parameters or unknown referral
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PHE publications gateway number: 2015320
Published: September 2015
Routes to Diagnosis 2006-2013, preliminary results
Preliminary results
All cancers in England diagnosed between 2006 and 2013 were assigned a route.
Lung cancer is used below to illustrate trends seen for each route. The full selection of
results, including breakdowns by cancer site, year, age, deprivation and ethnicity will
be available from the NCIN website5.
Figure 1.0 Routes to diagnosis for lung cancer by year, persons, England
• screening data is not applicable to lung cancers, with no national screening
programme active during the time period here
• TWWs increase throughout the period here from 22% in 2006, levelling off in 2008
then rising again after 2009 to 28% in 2013. Several Be Clear on Cancer campaigns
targeted lung cancer, running nationally in 2012, 2013 and 2014
• emergency presentations make up the largest single route for lung cancer, however,
this proportion falls each year from 39% in 2006 down to 35% in 2013, in line with the
TWW increase. In later years the Be Clear on Cancer campaigns may be having an
impact in reducing this route. The decline in emergency presentations seen for lung is
evident in many other cancer sites
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PHE publications gateway number: 2015320
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Routes to Diagnosis 2006-2013, preliminary results
Figure 2.0 Emergency presentations for 10 cancer sites by year, persons, England
• the proportion of all malignant neoplasms diagnosed as an emergency has
decreased since 2006; note that this figure is preliminary and does not account for
cervical or bowel screening data and so should be interpreted with some caution
• falls in emergency presentations are seen in many sites, lung falling from 39% to
34% and ovary from 31% to 26% as well as smaller decreases with melanomas and
female breast cancer falling by 1%; it is worth noting that generally where emergency
presentations are already low that the decreases are smaller, with larger falls where
proportions start off higher
• Abel et al.6 note that this is a statistically significant decrease over time for 20062010, and new data shows this to continue for more recent years
• national Be Clear on Cancer campaigns have been run for lung, breast cancer in the
over 70s, bladder and kidney cancers and for colorectal for 2012 and 2013, and
these may have contributed to the fall in emergencies seen here
• emergency presentations have low relative survival outcomes compared to other
routes, so a reduction in the proportion of patients diagnosed as an emergency
should increase relative survival
• in 2006 almost 25% of cancers, one in four, were diagnosed as an emergency; while in
2013 this figure was closer to 20%, or one in five – this is against a rise overall in the
numbers of cancers for many sites
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PHE publications gateway number: 2015320
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Routes to Diagnosis 2006-2013, preliminary results
Methodology
The Routes to diagnosis methodology is described in detail in the British Journal of
Cancer article ‘Routes to Diagnosis for cancer - Determining the patient journey using
multiple routine datasets’3, a brief summary is provided below to aid interpretation of the
results presented.
All newly diagnosed malignant cancers excluding non-melanoma skin cancer, and
including selected benign and in situ tumours, diagnosed between 2006 and 2013 in
residents of England were extracted from the cancer analysis system (CAS). These
records were linked at patient level to admitted patient care (Inpatient) and outpatient
Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) datasets; the national Cancer Waiting Times (CWT)
monitoring dataset and national breast screening data. National bowel and cervical
cancer screening data will be linked once available. It is known that the identification of
screening as a route for cervical cancers is not fully representative.
Firstly, HES data were used to categorise the route for each cancer individually.
Screening and CWT data were then examined with the route assignment potentially
changing to either a screening or two week wait (TWW) route.
For patients with HES activity, a specific inpatient or outpatient episode was identified in
HES as the end-point of the route by its proximity to the date of diagnosis. The endpoint was assumed to be the clinical care event that led most immediately to diagnosis.
From this episode HES data were examined to work backwards through the hospital
journey to identity a start-point of the route: the initial referral into secondary care. The
characteristics of this start-point enabled an initial route to be assigned.
For cases with no HES activity in the six months prior to date of diagnosis, the route was
classified as unknown or death certificate only (DCO).
After routes were allocated to each case from the HES data, screening and CWT data
were examined. Where a case could be linked to an urgent referral for suspected
cancer it was classified as a TWW route, unless the route (categorised using HES data)
was an emergency presentation with an admission date within 28 days prior to the
decision to treat date. Where the case could be linked to a screening event it was
classified as a screening route. If both screening data and TWW data were available for
a patient then a screen detected route took priority over a TWW.
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PHE publications gateway number: 2015320
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Routes to Diagnosis 2006-2013, preliminary results
Further information
A great many resources and publications are available on Routes to diagnosis. These
will be updated as new data becomes available.
Workbooks – the NCIN website has a number of MS Excel workbooks that have
breakdowns by route, cancer site, sex, age, deprivation quintiles and ethnicity. A further
workbook will be added in the future with more detail on the emergency route and
breakdowns by clinical commissioning group (CCG) and Strategic Clinical Network
(SCN) geographies.
Technical document – the NCIN website hosts a document describing in detail the
methodology and data sources used to produce Routes to diagnosis.
Reports and briefings – several reports and briefings are available in addition to this
one. Previous publications include a report on cancer of unknown primary by route, a
comparison of several studies to routes and a more detailed examination of the
emergency route. A poster with day of week data is also available.
Peer Review papers – a large number of journal articles focus on, use or cite data from
Routes to diagnosis. A selection of these papers can be found below:
• Routes to diagnosis for cancer – determining the patient journey using multiple
routine data sets – available here
• emergency presentation of cancer and short-term mortality – available here
• cancer-specific variation in emergency presentation by sex, age and deprivation
across 27 common and rarer cancers – available here
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PHE publications gateway number: 2015320
Published: September 2015
Routes to Diagnosis 2006-2013, preliminary results
References
1. Department of Health (2007) Cancer Reform Strategy. Department of Health:
London, England. Report
2. Department of Health (2011) Improving Outcomes: A Strategy for Cancer.
Department of Health: London, England. Report
3. Elliss-Brookes L, McPhail S, Ives A, Greenslade M, Shelton J, Hiom S, Richards M
(2012) Routes to diagnosis for cancer—determining the patient journey using multiple
routine data sets. Br J Cancer 107(8): 1220–1226. Article
4. Independent Cancer Taskforce Report.
5. National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) website.
6. Abel G, Shelton J, Johnson S, Elliss-Brookes L, Lyratzopoulos G (2015) Cancerspecific variation in emergency presentation by sex, age and deprivation across 27
common and rarer cancers. Br J Cancer 112: 129–136. Article
FIND OUT MORE:
Routes to diagnosis data are available from the NCIN website:
www.ncin.org.uk/publications/routes_to_diagnosis
Other useful resources within the NCIN partnership:
What cancer statistics are available and where can I find them?
www.ncin.org.uk/publications/reports
Public Health England’s National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) is a UK-wide initiative,
working to drive improvements in cancer awareness, prevention, diagnosis and clinical
outcomes by improving and using the information collected about cancer patients for analysis,
publication and research.
First published: September 2015
© Crown copyright 2015
Re-use of Crown copyright material (excluding logos) is allowed under the terms
of the Open Government Licence, visit www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/opengovernment-licence/version/3 for terms and conditions.
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PHE publications gateway number: 2015320
Published: September 2015